The King and I review: Grand affair is money well spent

Whenever a high-end musical comes to town, there are often complaints about the price of tickets. It’s not unjustified – with seats anywhere from $60 to $160 each, it’s an expensive night out, and often prohibitive for families.

However, with a show such as The King and I, which spent one-third of its $6 million budget on sets and costumes, you can definitely see where your money has gone.

The King and I featuring Teddy Tahu Rhodes and Lisa McCune. Photo: Brian Geach

Producers Opera Australia and John Frost have spared no expense to make this Rodgers and Hammerstein classic the most sumptuous production to hit the Lyric Theatre stage in years.

With kilometres of beautiful fabrics, more gold and jewels than a Dubai souq and 60,000 Swarovski crystals embedded in the elaborate set, it may as well be renamed The Bling and I.

The crucial investment of course is the cast, crew and orchestra. All the pretty dresses and shiny props can’t save a poor voice or dodgy acting – but again the money has been well spent.

Lisa McCune is perfectly cast – her vocal range and style is a great fit for Anna Leonowens, the British governess who accepts a job teaching the King of Siam’s children in the 1860s. Anna is not a girlish ingénue, rather, a woman with enough worldly experience to stand up for herself and what she believes is right, and McCune captures this well.

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Kudos must also go to McCune for managing the enormous crinoline dresses that make up her wardrobe and give her the appearance she’s steering a tugboat (albeit a graceful and glamorous one). Her vocal highlights included the charming Getting to Know You, Hello Young Lovers and a downright funny version of Shall I Tell You What I Think of You?

Operatic power comes in the form of Shu-Cheen Yu, who plays the King’s head wife Lady Thiang, and Jenny Liu, the young Burmese princess Tuptim, given to the King as a present but in love with another. Their soaring soprano voices are extraordinary – Yu’s Something Wonderful a particular highlight.

Marty Rhone is suitably severe as the Kralahome, the Prime Minister, but it’s a shame the role does not give the former 70s pop star much of a chance to sing. John Adam makes a fine British diplomat, and Adrian Li Donni as Tuptim’s lover Lun Tha duets well with Liu on We Kiss in a Shadow and I Have Dreamed.

A highlight is the contingent of Brisbane children playing the King’s children, as well as Anna’s son Louis. They’re just gorgeous, and their occasional fumbles all the more endearing.

But what of the King himself?

The casting of Teddy Tahu Rhodes throws up a few concerns about ethnicity and the balance of political correctness versus box office draw in the theatre.

Rhodes is not Asian, he is from New Zealand. His bald head gives him an instant resemblance to Yul Brynner, who so famously defined the role. Brynner himself was born in Russia, but had some Eurasian heritage.

Hearing Rhodes take on the King of Siam’s broken English is initially jarring, like listening to everyone’s least favourite uncle do his best joke about Chinese drivers at a family gathering. Rhodes is also relatively recent to musicals - his turn with McCune in 2013’s South Pacific was his debut after a life in the opera.

Rhodes never looks as comfortable as McCune onstage, but given much of the King’s role switches between questioning himself over modernising Siam, and getting stroppy with Anna for trying to do just that, the discomfort manages to work.

The King also has the show’s best lines, and Rhodes delivers the “et cetera, et cetera, et ceteras” well. His version of the witty and wordy philosophy song A Puzzlement is also well-executed, and thankfully his enormous height doesn’t interfere with the jokes about his subjects and Anna needing to keep their heads lower than his.

By the time the action gets to the classic Shall We Dance?, the pairing of McCune and Rhodes has won the crowd over, and the applause is not just for the remarkable physical effort involved in polka-ing around the stage without tripping over McCune’s leviathan-like ballgown.

Set pieces like the famous ballet The Small House of Uncle Thomas remain true to choreographer Jerome Robbins’ original vision, and the production is held up by its strong ensemble of dancers and singers (most of Asian heritage).

The King and I is a grand affair, but the combination of great music, a great orchestra, great singing and a good mix of humour and romance will be worth the investment for musical lovers.